As filming progressed, Heater was given more time in front of the camera and a few lines, but British law at the time forbid Jesus to speak or his face to be seen if he were a “secondary character.” So, Heater as Jesus appears only from behind, as when he gives water to Charlton Heston's enslaved Judah Ben-Hur.
(at around 3h 10 mins) Christ is always seen from the back, but when He is condemned to death He is facing Pilate and His face is obscured by a shadow added optically in post production when William Wyler determined that actor Claude Heater's face was too clearly seen, even at a distance.
Jack Huston, Morgan Freeman and Toby Kebbell star in “Ben-Hur.” In the new “Ben-Hur,” by contrast, Jesus is played by a hunky Brazilian actor named Rodrigo Santoro, who receives third billing after his costars Jack Huston (Ben-Hur) and Toby Kebbell (Messala), as though completing some sort of above-the-title trinity.
Claude Heater (October 25, 1927 – May 28, 2020) was an American opera singer. He is also known for portraying the role of Jesus Christ (uncredited in the titles) in the 1959 classic film Ben-Hur.
The story recounts the adventures of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince from Jerusalem, who is enslaved by the Romans at the beginning of the first century and becomes a charioteer and a Christian. Running in parallel with Judah's narrative is the unfolding story of Jesus, from the same region and around the same age.
Several actors were offered the role of Judah Ben-Hur before it was accepted by Charlton Heston. Burt Lancaster claimed he turned down the role because he found the script boring and belittling to Christianity. Paul Newman turned it down because he said he didn't have the legs to wear a tunic.
However, the film failed to generate the same kind of excitement as the Heston epic. The filmmakers had some success attracting faith-based consumers, but couldn't grow the audience beyond the devout. Kids stayed away, critics lobbed bombs, and secular consumers took a hard pass.
And since it's a novel, that means the tale of Ben-Hur is 100 percent fiction, wholly created by Wallace. So what is Jesus doing in the story? Ben-Hur is considered a Christian novel, perhaps the most influential one of all time. It uses the fictional character of Judah Ben-Hur to work as an allegory for Jesus' life.
On December 2, Nazanin Boniadi was confirmed as the actress who would play Esther. On January 12, 2015, Sofia Black-D'Elia was cast as Ben-Hur's sister, Tirzah. On January 13, Rodrigo Santoro was announced as Jesus.
Did Charlton Heston really drive the horses in Ben-Hur?
Yes, in close-up shots, that's really Charlton Heston (as Judah Ben-Hur) and Stephen Boyd (as his rival Messala) driving the chariots. They trained for months to learn how to drive the four-horse teams. In long shots, however, the chariots are driven by stuntmen.
When Nikos Kazantzakis publishes The Last Temptation of Christ in 1955, the Catholic Church bans it and the Greek Orthodox Church excommunicates him. Three decades later, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese releases his screen adaptation of the novel.
He is sent to be a slave, and his mother and sister are imprisoned. Years later he returns, wins a chariot race against Messala, and is reunited with his now leprous mother and sister. The mother and sister are cured on the day of the Crucifixion, and the family is converted to Christianity.
A Lesson From Ben Hur. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
Though Christ's life is traced from his birth, to his hidden life, to his public ministry, to his passion and death, we never see his face or hear his voice. Instead, Ben-Hur is a classic revenge epic leavened with a pious message of forgiveness.
It's a name thought to be derived from words for liberty, nobility, whiteness, or a hole or cavern. ( harar - a central source of heat) it has a different meaning in Arabic. Hur is one of the two men who held up Moses' arms during the Israelites' battle against the Amalekites.
Not very. While many details are correct, there is one glaring error: the Roman admiral Quintus Arrius would not have been granted a triumph after defeating the pirates.
At the time, shooting on location was all the rage and Ben-Hur began photography in Italy. The production suffered from long delays, underwhelming dailies, and deaths (more than 100 horses, and at least one person).
The Jew Judah Ben-Hur is wrongly accused by his former friend, the Roman Messala, of attempting to kill a Roman official. He is sent to be a slave, and his mother and sister are imprisoned.
The Passion of The Christ is a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film opens in the Garden of Olives (Gethsemane) where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper.
Set in the late '90s in Mexico, The Chosen One is a six-episode adaptation of the popular American Jesus graphic novel trilogy by Mark Millar and Peter Gross. It's Millar's third comic to be adapted into a series by Netflix.
